Universal Studios

We have gone to DisneyWorld every time we go to Florida to see Aunt Dolly and my cousins there. For this latest trip, we decided to forego Disney and see Universal instead, mainly because we wanted to see the Harry Potter villages they created in the two Universal parks.

The Harry Potter streets were filled with all of the stores and shops written about in the books, but not all of them were open for business. Most of the shops were empty, with just displays in the windows but no shopkeepers to talk to or merchandise to buy. The souvenirs were mostly wands (very expensive for plastic made in China), Hogwarts robes, scarves, and keychains, Butter Beer (very sweet but delicious) and Pumpkin Juice (we didn't try that because of the reactions from people who tasted it).

And shame on Universal..... there are two Harry Potter villages, one in each park. So they are forcing you to pay admission to both parks if you want the full HP experience. You take the Hogwarts train to get from one park to the other, and the train ride is fun but you don't see the outside world when you're on the train. There are scenes and sounds from the HP films showing on the train windows as you ride along.

We quickly saw the HP attractions, ate in the restaurants mentioned in the books, and walked around each of the parks. We paid for tickets for two days' worth of both Universal parks, but by nightfall of the first day, we had seen everything worth seeing. We bypassed all the extreme rides, enjoyed the colorful and joyous Dr. Seuss village, and wished for a better and fuller experience in the Harry Potter villages.

Now that we have seen the Harry Potter displays at Universal, I would not go back to those parks. Disney would have done justice to HP and J.K. Rowling, I'm sure. And Universal could take a lesson or two from the Disney parks concerning cleanliness and maintenance. Disney always does it better.... at the Disney parks, everything looks brand new and just-out-of-the-box. Always. No matter how crowded they are.

Next trip to Florida, it will be a Disney destination.

Aunt Dolly in Florida

I think my aunt is the only woman in Florida wearing a sweater when the temperature is in the 80s and the sun is shining. But that's okay... we cut her some slack because Aunt Dolly is just a few months shy of her 104th birthday. She tells us that her shoulders get cold, and she insists that air-conditioned air is not good for one's health.

My aunt used to live with my cousin S in a two-story home, the stairs of which she would go up and down at least five or six times a day. "For the exercise," she told us. But then she fell in the middle of the night.... not down the stairs, but in her bathroom. Unfortunately, her face hit the side of the sink and she was terribly black and blue. "Someone must have moved the sink," she insisted.

After that fall, her doctor thought it would be a better idea if she moved into an assisted living facility, so someone would always be there and she wouldn't have to worry about stairs and misplaced sinks. S found a beautiful residence for her, filled with gardens and comfortable rooms and friendly smiling aides. Aunt Dolly likes it there very much. She says everyone is so good to her and they like to hear her stories about the family. The only downside, she said, is that "The place is filled with so many old people.... it's sad to see them all at once in one place."  When Aunt Dolly told us that, I resisted the urge to tell her that she herself was not only one of those 'old people' but she is the oldest one living there.

The saddest part of seeing Aunt Dolly was bringing her back to the facility after she spent the day at my cousin's house with us. I must have given her three or four goodbye hugs, and still my eyes filled with tears when I left her room. Aunt Dolly was always the most petite of all my aunts.... small in size, but a giant in personality and authority. Of my grandparents' nine children, Aunt Dolly is the only one left. It makes her sad to think that she has out-lived all of her brothers and sisters. I told Aunt Dolly that God is saving the best for last.

Blog this....

Magic.... I am typing this on my iPad (which I have named Gatsby). One quick trip to the AT&T store and the young man there showed me how to get the Blogspot thing-y on the page with all the other apps I have downloaded. I sound like I know what I'm doing with this iPad but most of the time, it is hit and miss. However, the more I use Gatsby the more hits I get.

So now of course I am wondering if I can get a photo to appear with the text. The AT&T guy showed me how to do that, but his fingers were flying all over the keyboard screen so I will have to see if I can duplicate what he did. I'm not even sure that the template for my blogs will even accept a picture.

Easter weekend has come and gone and it was a quiet one. The handyman worked all day on Saturday and half a day on Sunday. Not that we asked him to.... he asked to work for the extra money.   Having a new baby in the family makes one more productive, as if he isn't productive already.

The barn swallows have been building their nests around the porch, and we are trying to dissuade them from over-crowding. A few nests are fine, but last year we had two dozen... way too many baby birds around the porch in all of those nests. And with baby birds come the snakes.... my husband has already disposed of one snake that was trying to get into a nest. Stupid snake got himself caught between the screen and the window of the breakfast room. Not exactly what I wanted to see when I opened up the shutters.

Life goes on in the country...

Spring Fling for the lizards....

I have a red wrought iron chair by the back steps, just as cute as it can be because it looks like an old ice-cream parlor chair. Two lizards decided to use the seat of that chair for a romantic rendezvous during yesterday's sunny afternoon.

My husband and I were walking down the path towards the back door and I noticed a big blob of bright green on one corner of that chair. From a distance, it looked like someone spilled some green paint on the red metal. As we got closer, the green looked like wilted cabbage or some other type of green leafy vegetable. Closer still, and it was clear that the blob of green consisted of two lizards, one on top of the other and neither one of them were moving.

Were they dead?  Baked in the sun?  Not at all. The lizard on the bottom had its eyes open and was watching us, but it clearly was pinned down and couldn't move. The lizard on top had its eyes closed and we could see its chest moving up and down, breathing slowly in a contented sleep. My husband said the male was on top, sound asleep after his 'adventure,' and the female wasn't able to move because of the male's weight.

We brought bags of groceries up onto the porch and then into the house, and the two lizards stayed on the corner of the chair, the male sleeping and the female watching us, and they stayed like that for nearly fifteen minutes. My husband said that if I got close enough, I could probably hear the male snoring.

I resisted the urge to get that close. Even lizards deserve some semblance of privacy.

Cottage dreams...

We now have a young 20-something-yr-old girl renting our cottage. She moved in this past week and lost no time in taking away my shabby-chic decor in there. I told her from the beginning that she could remove anything she didn't need or want in the cottage, and she proceeded to do just that as soon as she paid the rent and got the key. As a result, 75% of the cottage decor ended up on the porch. Which is fine with me, since it was my suggestion that she make herself at home and decorate as she wished. About the only thing that stayed inside the cottage was the DREAM sign over the beds, and she kept the sofas and small kitchen appliances.

I now have a plethora of Victorian and shabby chic items to price and bring to my booth at the antique shop. I took some of the cast-offs to the rooms in the barn, and a few things ended up back here at the house. RW looked at both the apartment over the barn and the guest cottage, but decided the cottage was more her style. She is a country-girl at heart, with no use for frills and fussy things, so I thought she would choose the barn apartment, but she liked the idea of one big room rather than four small ones.

We intend to rent the barn rooms also, rather than always having them empty, and we're hoping that possibly two of RW's friends might decide to split the rent on that two-bedroom apartment. We had hopes of keeping both structures ready for visiting family and friends, but that hasn't happened all that often since we moved up here, so we decided to turn the two buildings into money-makers.

RW seems happy over there in the cottage, and she's a hard-working girl with good common sense, so we hope her reign in the cottage is a long one.

The goldfish seem to be fine in the fountain. They're eating up the algae in there like they're supposed to, plus I bought a can of goldfish food to sprinkle on top of the water every few days. When the fish swim to the top of the water to gobble up the flakes, it's easy to count them and so far, all twelve are still there. I hope luck holds out and we don't lose any fish to the raccoons or the egrets.... my intention was not to have a goldfish buffet out in the front courtyard.

I have to say that I do miss having chickens... and I did think we could get a very small coop to hold just two hens... but then sooner or later (most likely sooner) we would be losing the hens to the hawks or to foxes or coyotes, and that's just too heart-breaking to go through again.

The bluebonnets were beautiful this year.... especially in our field beyond the barn. An ocean of blue from nearly one end to the other, and you couldn't help but stare at all that blue from the porch. The paintbrushes and wild roses are also up and covering patches of the fields with red and pink, and pretty soon we will have the yellow Texas stars blooming and it will look like the sun exploded on the pastures.

Spring is a beautiful time up here in the Hill Country, what with all the wildflower colors that paint the green fields with Nature's touch of an Impressionist's brush.  The weather has been perfect, with cooler temperatures in the morning and then below 90 degrees for the rest of the day. The summer heat with over 100-degree temperatures seems like a life-time away but I know that will be starting in a heart-beat.  Spring in Texas.... enjoy it while you can.